Posts from — November 2006

It’s been more than an hour and I’m still watching a series of videos from this amazing kid from France, Mattrach. The song is Wishful Thinking by John Petrucci. Matt’s version is quite impressive for a 15 years old, though. At least it keeps me up till 5 AM, dammit!

Sometimes people take blog the wrong way. Blog makes readers feel like they know bloggers like they know their friends. It’s actually not. Reading blog is just like watching reality shows where you sympathize with the players in the game. You root for the guy to win the prize or want him to get the girl, whatever the rules of the game are.

Once I had this little notebook with me everywhere I went. I called it a book of collective thoughts. I wrote my thoughts about everything I felt strongly about in the book. It was a very personal book. In a way, the book was my diary although I didn’t write it everyday. It could be articles in a magazine or newspaper. I wrote about movies, relationships, school and politics.

I gave the book to one of my close friend to read. I think I like expressing myself just like a painter needs to paint or a musician just needs to play. I forgot what my friend said after reading my journal. I didn’t care much for feedback anyway. The act of giving it to my friend was enough to fulfill my need to express.

Same thing with this blog, a little less personal here though, I just want to express what I feel. I want to cry out to the world and such. Do I want help with anything or comment on anything? maybe or maybe not. It doesn’t matter.

I just want to write.

Technically attacking your opponent and not their argument is an “ad hominem“. Example: You are dumb so I don’t have to listen to your completely valid argument you stinky person.” Straw man-ing is when you take the other person valid point and mutate it into something which is only vaguely similar but much easier to attack.

Two current political examples:

Arguement: I think the war in Iraq is unjustified
Straw Man: So you’d rather have Sadaam in power?
Arguement: We should raise the minimum wage
Straw Man: Why do you hate small business?

This is a game, and while I might not be as offensive as Rainfall (possibly by virtue of being mainly PvE of late), I can understand saying, posting, or doing things with total disregard for how others feel about it. While I don’t support things that directly harm people or their existing efforts (say, account hacking), a Multiplayer game is going to have an intrinsic measure of competitiveness. I don’t know that Rainfall has ever done anything aside from be rude (which I cannot criticize in this environment) or make PvP difficult for others for his own benefit.

Hindering someone’s efforts in a competetive environment strikes me as totally legitimate, and a very common form of human aggression. I think Skywall does have a fair amount of carebearishness to it. While I’m too lazy and low key for the tension of a PvP server, and thus put up with the carebears instead of reroll, I do think its disappointing when people get upset with someone for going all out to achieve a goal, particularly when its a competition based goal.

The ineffectiveness of trying to prevent those who are willing from trying as hard as possible can be seen in the Timesink Era of Horde PvP. While I admire them for finding a way to exploit a system that was terribly flawed, I think that the whole premise was one of “This is very hard to accomplish as intended, can we make it easier?” I don’t think that’s a healthy perspective. It also eventually broke down in the face of those who were willing to achieve the goal faster through harder work.

And for Veiled, since I know you are fond of semantic games, mature is defined as having reached full development. Now I’m not sure how old Rainfall is, but he seems to be at least intelligent enough to play this game well. Even if he’s not a full adult, I don’t think you’re talking about physical maturity as much as emotional maturity. In an emotional sense, the argument for or against Rainfall is subjective at best. You could claim he is emotionally immature due to his unwillingness to cooperate with others (which is nearly definitely false on an absolute scale), or you could claim he is emotionally mature because he does not depend on the approval of others and operates with a self sufficient sense of self. If you meant social maturity, I think that’s rather amusing considering this is a game, and artificial semi-world of limited interactions and possibilities. The society here is substantially different from the one all mankind is bound to for better or worse, and thus cannot be easily subjected to treatment with the same terms in regards to social issues.

Ducleus of SS

They say people who can’t pick a side would go to the bottommost of hell, people without principles. I’m a man without any real principles. Or I could say my principles change from day to day with new findings and reasonings.

The type of people that irritate me the most are those who believe in something so much they wouldn’t change their believe in hundred years. Kinda vague statement…again, I know. Not that I have anything against the type of people, of course, as long as they just keep their ideas to themselves. But, it’s hard to keep any ideas to yourself if you believe it so much, isn’t it? You would want others to know what you believe and do things the same way as you because you are so certain that your way is the only way.

I used to be a man with principles. I would find new ideas and thoughts that I liked every so often. I would also have the urge to tell people my new believe everyday, too. I wanted so much for people to think and believe the same way I did. Ten years ago, I would even try to force my ideas to anybody I know in a not so friendly way. Yes, I used to be the kind of people I hate the most.

Things change, but people don’t really change. I’m the same man as I was ten years ago, but rather than just believe in something so much, I’m believing in everything and everyone. I’ve stopped trying to find any single way.

“Studies have shown that 85-90% of what people communicate is not with words.”

MSN, Yahoo messenger, ICQ, AIM and such live chat program seem to be archaic to me thinking you can just communicate through such program just by words. I’ll just ignore emoticon for now, although I’ll just say it here that emoticons are very misleading tools.

What’s the difference between instant messengers and a telegram? Well, even telephone seems to be more sophisticated than instant messengers.
In real life conversation between 2 people, you have words, pitch, gesture, rhythm, physical contact, and even environment at your service. All these tools mean a lot in communication. They can add to the words, help clarify the meaning of what you’re trying to say, or they can misleading you completely from your intended context.

People tend to pay more attention to the 10-15% and ignore the more important 85-90%. Of course, when someone yells at you, who would ever pay attention to what he’s trying to say? You just yell back at him, or sometimes, you stay quiet but you’re madder than hell your ears are ringing. You won’t hear a thing…

What if you don’t have the 85-90% to use? Would the 10-15% go straight to the brain?

I’ve just witnessed a misunderstanding between two friends in chatroom a few days ago. One of them was mad about an incident earlier while the other tried to calm him down. The two were not really close, and their scope of experience didn’t really intersect. The calmer tried to calm the mad down. What he thought was soothing words turned out to be viewed as I-don’t-give-a-damn words to the mad. The mad got madder and left the chatroom immediately.

A friend of mine emailed his boss;

“i’m sure you’re pleased with a lot of projects i’ve done for the company. my question to you is that would you consider giving me a raise?”

Maybe I’m a bit too dramatic. Maybe I watched too many movies, but I could read the email above in so many ways.

INT. BOSS OFFICE. LATE AFTERNOON.

Bob strolls in the oval office and sits in one of the chair in front of Mr. P’s table. Mr. P looks up a little stun.

BOB (relax…a little too relax..thinking marlon brando’s quiet talk)

I’m sure you’re pleased with a lot of projects I’ve done for the company. (raise his finger at Mr. P.)
My question to YOU is that would you consider giving me a raise?

———————————-

That was one way to put it. Without knowing Bob, you could couple the words with the 85% any way you want, and the results would turn out differently.

But well… I know a little bit of Bob. I knew he meant every words just as they were, no two ways about it. ;D

The thing with living in this easy and familiar world for too long is that when you face something or someone that do things differently, you would think it was not right, or your way was better. You’d think your perspective was 100% accurate and real. It’s not and it never will be. Routine life is easy, but when things get rough, it’ll be thousand times harder on you.

I’ve decided to not stick with any design for enaweb.com at all. enaweb will change as often as my mind.

I watched Wicker Park 2 days ago alone in the middle of the night at about 2 in the morning. My wife didn’t want to watch it with me because it was a little too late…well, yes, it was hella late because I ended up going to bed right after the sun came up.

I don’t know if it’s that time of night or the style of the movie itself that’s so… haunting.

Who’s to say that this woman hasn’t been in love with you for a really long time?
And now that she found you again, she wasn’t about to let you go twice.

It’s not about how Lisa is the love of his life, or how much Matthew loves Lisa that make him so obsessed with her even after she vanished from his life for 2 years.
It’s the longing, the yearning, the questions that needed to be answered that made him kept searching and probably did things without thinking twice.

Last scene at the airport tells it all. Thanks to Coldplay, too.

Come up to meet you, Tell you I’m sorry, You don’t know how lovely you are

I had to find you, Tell you I need you, Tell you I set you apart

Tell me your secrets, And ask me your questions, Aww let’s go back to the start

Runnin’ in circles, [sounds like] Comin’ our tails, Heads on the science apart

Nobody said it was easy
It’s such a shame for us to part
Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be this hard
Aww take me back to the start

I was just guessin’, At numbers and figures, Pullin’ the puzzles apart

Questions of science, Science and progress, Do not speak as loud as my heart

Tell me you love me, Come back to haunt me, Oh when I rush to the start

Runnin’ in circles, [sounds like] Chasin’ our tails, Comin’ back as we are

Nobody said it was easy
Aww It’s such a shame for us to part
Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be so hard
I’m goin’ back to the start

Scientist by Coldplay